I’m writing in regards to your sensationalist “feature” on Québec. Your article met none of the basic standards of journalism. By authorizing its publication, describing Québec as “The Most Corrupt Province in Canada,” you have discredited your magazine.

Far from serious journalism, which is supported by facts an evidence, your article tries to demonstrate a simplistic and offensive thesis that Québecers are genetically incapable of acting with integrity.

Drawing on recent debates, you have concocted an assortment of dubious conclusions, unproven allegations, and isolated events, in which you confuse premier Duplessis, public service unions, the Quiet Revolution, state intervention, our Catholic roots, and above all the sovereignist movement.

With this twisted form of journalism and ignorance, any society would be painted in a poor light.

This is not the first time Maclean’s has published such an article. Less than a year ago, your magazine included a similar story about Montréal. Montréal happens to be the city that weathered the economic crisis better than any other in North America. Montréal also has the most university students per capita on the continent — more than Boston, which is considered one of the intellectual capitals of the United States.

You describe the government’s role in our economy as a weakness. Yet the gap with the rest of Canada is due mainly to investments by Hydro-Québec to make the province a North American leader in production of clean, renewable energy.

The Québec you chose not to mention happens to be the first place in North America to have regained all the jobs lost during the economic crisis, It is a key international hub in the aerospace industry, a leader in the biopharmaceutical industry and health sciences, the Canadian leader for investment in research and development, and a society that makes it a point of honour to fight social inequality and support families with the best record of having done so in Canada.

Québecs have accomplished the extraordinary feat of keeping the French language alive and well in North America for 400 years. We have done so not by putting up walls around us, but rather by reaching out to the world. From the Cirque du Soleil to Robert Lepage, from Bombardier to SNC-Lavalin, from Sainte-Justine’s hospital for children to the Montréal Neurological Institute, from Hydro-Québec to Rio Tinto Alcan, Québec shines in countless ways in the arts and through our knowledge based economy.

Québecers have always understood that their government and institutions would play an important role in promoting our identity. No other government in North America carries the same responsibility as Québec’s to protect the culture of a people who represent less than 3% of the continent’s population. And this same Québec has for 40 years debated its future within Canada. This is not a blight; it is evidence of our democratic maturity and values. I know of few places in the world where such a fundamental question has led o the formation of a legitimate, peaceful, and democratic political movement.

Yes, Québec is different from the rest of Canada. You say it’s the “bête noire” of the country; I say Québec is half of Canada’s soul, identity, and humanity.

I hope you are able to recognize your error and apologize to Québecers.